Whether wittingly or witlessly, President Barack
Obama is pursuing a neocon-charted path on Iran that parallels the one
that George W. Bush took to war with Iraq ratcheting up sanctions
against the "enemy," refusing to tolerate more peaceful options, and
swaggering along with the propagandistic tough-guy-ism of the major
U.S. news media.

The Obama administration is celebrating its
victory in getting the UN Security Council on Wednesday to approve a
fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran. Obama also is expected
to sign on to even more draconian penalties that should soon sail
through Congress.

Obama may be thinking that his UN
diplomatic achievement will buy him some credibility and some time
with American neocons and Israel's Likud government, which favor a
showdown with Iran over its nuclear program.

However, the end result of the new
sanctions may well be a greater likelihood that the debate within the
Iranian government will tilt toward a decision to proceed with
ever-higher-level enrichment of uranium and possibly construction of a
nuclear bomb as the only means of self-defense.

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That may be the opposite of what Obama
seeks, but it is what the neocons and Likud would cite as justification
for another Middle East war.

Just as the neocons and Israel wanted
"regime change" in Iraq, they have long hungered for "regime change" in
Iran, too. A favorite neocon joke at the time of the Iraq War was to
speculate on which direction to go next, to Syria or Iran, with the
punch-line, "Real men to go Tehran!"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
has made clear that he considers the possibility of an Iranian nuclear
weapon an "existential threat" to Israel, one that would justify a
military strike. While Israel's powerful air force would likely inflict
the first blows, national security analysts believe that the U.S.
military would be pulled in to finish off Iran's military capabilities.

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The neocon/Likud hope would be that these
military attacks would embolden Iran's internal opposition to rise up
and overthrow the Islamic system that has governed Iran since 1979, in
other words, "regime change." Much like the neocon/Likud thinking about
Iraq, however, these grandiose plans often end up with unpredictable
and bloody outcomes.

Many war-gamers believe the economic,
geo-political and military consequences of an attack on Iran are
impossible to gauge, though some in the U.S. military fear that such a
conflict could ignite a regional war and cause serious strategic
damage to the United States. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Bomb-Bomb-Iran
Parlor Game."]

President Onboard?

Whether President Obama comprehends these
risks or may invite them is unclear. What is known is that he
staffed his administration with a number of hardliners on Iran, from
Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State to Rahm Emanuel as White House
chief of staff. Voices of moderation, if there are any, have been
noticeably silent.

Some analysts believe that the President
is a relative "dove" on Iran, citing his private letter to Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that encouraged Brazil and Turkey
to work out a deal to get Iran to transfer about half its low-enriched
uranium to Turkey in exchange for more highly enriched uranium that
could only be used for peaceful medical purposes.

However, after Lula da Silva and Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan got Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad to agree to that deal, the arrangement was denounced by
Secretary of State Clinton and was ridiculed by the major U.S. news
media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

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Even after Brazil released Obama's
supportive letter, the President would not publicly defend his
position. Instead, his administration pressed ahead with the new round
of sanctions.

What is also clear is that tough-guy-ism
is running strong, much like it was in the months before the U.S.
invasion of Iraq.

A New
York Times editorial on Thursday praised the new round of
anti-Iran sanctions, but complained they "do not go far enough." Still,
the Times took encouragement from the hope that the United States and
European countries might impose much harsher sanctions on their own.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
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